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A Brief History of Anglo-Western Suicide: from Legal Wrong to Civil Right Helen Y

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A Brief History of Anglo-Western Suicide: from Legal Wrong to Civil Right Helen Y Golden Gate University School of Law GGU Law Digital Commons Publications Faculty Scholarship 2018 A Brief History of Anglo-Western Suicide: From Legal Wrong to Civil Right Helen Y. Chang Golden Gate University - San Francisco, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.law.ggu.edu/pubs Part of the Civil Rights and Discrimination Commons, and the Constitutional Law Commons Recommended Citation 46 S.U.L.Rev. 150 (2018). This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Faculty Scholarship at GGU Law Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Publications by an authorized administrator of GGU Law Digital Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. A BRIEF HISTORY OF ANGLO-WESTERN SUICIDE: FROM LEGAL WRONG TO CIVIL RIGHT By: Helen Y. Chang* INTRODUCTION The act of self-killing and its legal, medical, religious, moral, social, and ethical implications present a complex and diverse range of response in social theory, philosophy, law, science, and judgment. By definition, "suicide" is a self-directed act that results in one's own death but in fact, there are wide variations in type and action.1 Not all self-killing is considered a "suicide" as in the example of a soldier who sacrifices herself to save others. 2 Motivation and purpose are additional defining factors as to which acts are included within the common understanding of suicide.3 Worldwide, geographically and across cultures, the phenomenon of suicide has a complex history extending back to * Professor of Law, Golden Gate University School of Law. My sincere gratitude and appreciation to my tireless research assistant Tom Kinan for his meticulous attention to detail and outstanding research skills. 1. Suicide is "the act or an instance of taking one's own life voluntarily and intentionally." Suicide, MERRIAM-WEBSTER DICTIONARY ONLINE, http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/suicide. The latin etymology of "suicide" is the "deliberate killing of oneself," 1650s, from Modern Latin suicidium "suicide," from Latin sui "of oneself' (genitive of se "self'), from PIE *s(u)w-o- "one's own," from root *s(w)e- (see idiom) + -cidium "a killing" (see -cide). ONLINE ETYMOLOGY DICTIONARY, http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=suicide. 2. ROBERT BECK & JOHN BOYD ORR, ETHICAL CHOICE, 51 (1970). ("Even ethical theories which teach principles of self-directed action and development can include reference to giving one's life for others or sacrificing one's life when such is the highest value of which one is capable."). 3. G. DESHAIEs. PSYCHOLOGIE DU SUICIDE. (1947). (DeShaies proposed the following definition in 1947: "Suicide is the act of killing oneself in a continually conscious manner, taking death as a means or as an end.") (This definition does not require intent but does include consciousness and motivation. Thus "chronic suicide" (habitual harmful behavior e.g. drug abuse) and "partial suicide" (self-mutilation) would be included in this definition.) See also I. STENGEL, SUICIDE AND ATTEMPTED SUICIDE xx-xxi (1st Aronson ed. 1974). 2018] ANGLO- WESTERN SUICIDE 151 primitive societies.4 There is a divergent spectrum of social response to suicide, ranging from glorification to horror, fascination to condemnation, and criminal wrong to legal right. This broad variance is often related to the specific type and form of suicide and the sociological, religious, and moral lens through which it is viewed. Contrary to its singular definition, suicide is not limited to self-directed acts but can include passive or active conduct by a third party and can result in the intentional deaths of innocent people,5 expanding the scope of at least certain types of "suicide" to homicide.6 Both the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament recount instances of accepted forms of suicide. 7 In Roman times, there were different types of suicide which were positively commended, such as the institutional, honor, ritual, and immolation acts of self- killing.8 In ancient Japan, variations of seppuku were socially and 4. Id. at 68. ("Suicide has been practiced for thousands of years in primitive and historic societies. .. .") GEORGE ROSEN, HISTORY, A HANDBOOK FOR THE STUDY OF SUICIDE 3. 27 (S. Perlin 1975). 5. Id. (Suicide bombing finds its origins in nineteenth century Russia when Ignaty Grinevitsky ignited a bomb killing himself and Alexander II, then leader of Imperial Russia.). 6. Tom Beauchamp, The Justification of Physician-Assisted Deaths, 29 IND. L. REV. 1173 (1996). ("Passive euthanasia involves allowing a patient to die by removing her from artificial life support systems such as respirators and feeding tubes or simply discontinuing medical treatments necessary to sustain life. Active euthanasia, by contrast, involves positive steps to end the life of a patient, typically by lethal injection."); MERRIAM-WEBSTER DICTIONARY ONLINE, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/homicide. ("Homicide" is the killing of one human being by another"); See http://www.nbcnews.comlid/43265235/ns/usnews-lifelt/jack-kevorkian- convicted-assisted-suicides-dies/#.WQDpFI61uhc. (Dr. Jack Kevorkian aka "Dr. Death" was well-known pathologist and activist for euthanasia. He was charged on several occasions for murder and served eight years for the second degree murder of a patient with Lou Gherig's disease). 7. Rosen, supra note 5, at 4-5. 8. Id. at 5-6. ("Honor suicides to avoid capture, humiliation, and death are frequent in the conflicts among the Greeks, the Romans, and their neighbors."); Id. (Suicides out of loyalty to a military leader or husband were a form of institutional or ritual suicide); Id. at 7-8 (Suicide by immolation was reported in Greco-Roman times. referencing the fiery and public suicide of philosopher Peregrinus Proteus in 165 A.D.). 152 SOUTHERN UNIVERSITY LAW REVIEW [Vol. 46.1 positively sanctioned. 9 Contemporary forms of suicide include state sanctioned suicide as part of a military offensive such as the Japanese kamikaze suicide pilots of World War 1110 and the radical acts of terrorism by suicide bombers.'I In the present, some forms of suicide are recognized as legal and arguably part of an individual's "rights."12 Forms of suicide, recognized as a legitimate manner to take one's life today, are known as mercy killing, euthanasia, assisted suicide, physician-assisted suicide, an individual's right to die or end-of life-choice, and death with dignity.13 This article will examine the history of suicide from antiquity, where certain types of self-killing were socially acceptable, to its evolution as a criminal wrong and its modern reincarnation as a moral and legal right. In the early Common Era, suicide was not a criminal wrong, but with the spread of 9. GLENNYs HOWARTH & OLIVER LEAMAN, ENCYCLOPEDIA OF DEATH AND DYING, 231 (2014). (Seppuku is a ritual suicide by disembowelment. Fus6, T. Soc Psychiatry (1980) 15: 57. "Suicide and Culture in Japan: A Study of Seppuku as an Institutionalized Form of Suicide." Obligatory seppuku was used as a form of capital punishment for disgraced samurai in feudal Japan.) Id. at 230 (Kanshi was another form of seppuku in feudal times as an act in protest of a lord's decision.). 10. Yula TANAKA, JAPAN'S KcAMZKzE PLOTS AND CONTEMPORARY SUICIDE BOMBERS: WAR AND TERROR, THE ASIA-PACIFIC JOURNAL, July 6, 2005 at 1(The majority of kamikaze pilots were young, non-commissioned or petty officers.). 11. See LEWIS, THE HUMAN USE OF HUMAN BEINGS: A BRIEF HISTORY OF SUICIDE BOMBINGS, ORIGINS CURRENT EVENTS IN HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE, April 2013 (the horrific September 11 attacks which used human hijackers to re- program and control the aircraft.). 12. See Cruzan v. Director, Missouri Dept. of Health, 497 U.S. 261, 110 S.Ct. 2841, 111 L.Ed.2d 224 (1990)(recognizing a "general liberty interest in refusing medical treatment"); See also Compassion in Dying v. Washington, 79 F.3d 790 (9th Cir. 1996) (en banc), reversed by Washington v. Glucksburg, 521 U.S. 702 (1997). (holding that the Fourteenth Amendment Due Process Clause included a constitutional right to die.) (Although reversed by the Supreme Court, the 9th Circuit's recognition of a constitutional right to die represents a modern shift in the legal treatment of suicide.) 13. These types of suicide generally involve a third party, but can be further distinguished between: (1) passive conduct (the omission of life-saving conduct) and (2) active conduct (committing an act of killing). Passive and active euthanasia can be either: (1) voluntary (with the consent or at the request of the person who wants to die) or (2) involuntary (without consent). 2018] ANGLO- WESTERN SUICIDE 153 Christianity, suicide became illegal. In the present day, a growing minority of states have legalized some forms of suicide or self- killing.14 In 2018, six states and the District of Columbia had legalized some form of physician-assisted suicide: California 5 , Colorado 1 6, District of Columbia, 17 Montana, 18 Oregon, 19 20 2 Vermont, and Washington 1 Twenty-three states are considering some type of death with dignity legislation in their 2018 session. 22 The rise of an individual's right to die has been concurrent with the rise and recognition of individual civil rights in the twentieth century, and more specifically an individual's right of privacy without state intervention. Part One explores the Anglo- Western historical treatment of suicide including its religious, legal, and social implications. Part Two focuses on the early American treatment of suicide. Part Three addresses the eugenic underpinnings of the early euthanasia movement and its legal transformation post-World War II as an individual right. Part Four concludes that the legalization of suicide is inevitable within a society which values individual autonomy and self- determination. 14. Rosen. supra note 5, at 12.
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